15.12 Extreme Multiplayer Latency

[capinsaino]

Hello, my friends and I are attempting to play on a headless windows 7 server and experiencing extreme lag basically making the game unplayable. We've used this server many other times for various games without issue, but for some reason Factorio just doesn't seem to cooperate. Typically about 5-10 minutes in a game all players latency jumps to 200+ and doesn't drop back down. Very often the "Server Not Responding" message appears and we're forced to close. No Mods are running, basic vanilla 15.12. Everyone playing is in about a 10 mile radius and we can ping the server without problems.

We've tried the following:
1. Verified port forwarding 31457.
2. Varied the graphical settings for: Sprite Resolution (Low) and Video Memory Useage (Low) without success.
3. Set Minimum Latency to 30 to reduce the number of spikes.
4. The map seen doesn't ever surpass 4MB.
5. The problem continues attempting a simple multiplayer game (non server).
6. No blueprints are in use.

I'm not sure what to try next. I like placing burner mining drills as much as the next guy, but I'd prefer to continue progressing. Has anyone encountered this issue before? Could anyone please provide any feedback to help understand what the issue may be?

Edit for screenshots:

Server Ping:

ServerPing.jpg (464.29 KiB) Viewed 3091 times

Game Start:

StartGame.jpg (708.05 KiB) Viewed 3091 times

Latency 254:

Latency_254.jpg (1.1 MiB) Viewed 3091 times

Thanks,
Cap.

[capinsaino]

Bump for support.

Attempted to reconfigure server without success. Also setup a VPN connection to try a LAN game with minimal results as well. Game play max 1 hour before latency spikes at 254. Any ideas?

[kaizokuroof]

Is your headless server on the same machine? Maybe you can put on some network monitoring software on the PC you're using to connect to the headless server, as well as the headless server itself. You'll be able to see if your latency is coming from the network and if so, where.

I've used something called GlassWire which you can check detailed views on firewall/network usage. Or you could even use windows tools Resource Monitor.

[capinsaino]

Only thing that seemed to work is manually setting outbound firewall rules. This seemed to work until 15.19 and then everything pegged at 254 ticks again. About to give up on multiplayer as there is just something wrong with this game.

[AlienX]

Could you please provide me with a detailed description of your network topology so that I can better understand where the servers are, the clients etc etc.

e.g.
- Player A owns Server A which hosts the Factorio headless Client.
- Server A is a co-located server in a data centre / Server A is located at Player A's home
- Players A B and C's internet connection speeds are: x/y/z - they all connect to Server A via the WAN/LAN

Just need a better idea before more help is given.